Weber Smokefire EX6: Found possible low temp / flame-out cause in Weber SmokeFire EX6... sawdust jam скачать в хорошем качестве

Weber Smokefire EX6: Found possible low temp / flame-out cause in Weber SmokeFire EX6... sawdust jam

tl;dr: I am using Cookinpellets Hickory (which I'll obviously be changing immediately). They're either too small of a pellet or too dry so they crumble into dust and it causes a jam. Weber was nice enough to send me two bags of their branded pellets and I hope (expect) this to be a non-issue in the future. Because the SmokeFire has an inclined auger to protect against flash back ignition of the hopper, pellet dust doesn't get carried upwards (it falls back down in the tiny gap between the auger and auger tube) and builds up. After much build-up of this sawdust, there is an almost quicksand-like block at the hopper end of the auger causing a slow feed of actual pellets and/or causing pellets to half feed into the auger's path getting crushed and adding to the dust blockage. On the firebox side of things, you either get 100% dust as more pellets get crushed, or you get few pellets actually dropping into the firebox. I think the pellets I got from Cookinpellets are either too small, or too dry which is why they're shattering and getting pulverized into dust. After clearing out the hopper manually and feeding larger, sifted pellets by the handful I was able to slowly push out most of the dust and will wait until it burns itself out before leaf-blowing the entire auger (or disassembling). In the future I either have to sift judiciously before filling the hopper, or switch brands. Like I mentioned above, Weber is sending me two bags of their branded pellets and I'll repeat a burn test. This explains why my chicken cook would not get past 280°F for 5 hours today, but I wasn't going to stop it mid-cook to find out why. It's a shame because I've had three cooks with the Cookinpellets Hickory pure blend and they've all been amazing until today... I can't babysit pellet feeding though, and because of the fire protection incline of the auger, it's not really Weber's fault, it's a design tradeoff for safety against feeding dust. A decline-sloped auger wouldn't have this issue, but a bad dust block could cause a auger / hopper fire as I've seen in other designs. shrug Thank you to Weber who is replacing my controller regardless (current won't take anything past 04000 firmware version), and my auger (revision D currently to what I expect is revision F found in others'). They've been nothing but polite, patient, and helpful on the phone and through email. I get why this happens, and it's like a gun, only eats certain ammo or it jams... doesn't make it a bad design if there's a reason behind it though.